Antoine Lavosier spared

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Escaping the guillotine he is exiled from France in 1794. He emigrates to America and founds a small gunpowder co in Delaware.

What happens subsequent?
 

Thande

Donor
Not sure. A lot of scientists (sorry, natural philosophers) in Britain clung fiercely to Lavoisier's views into the 1820s partially because of the romance of his 'martyrdom', which slowed things down a bit because Lavoisier's view of oxygen as a principle rather than an element turned out to be wrong.

If Lavoisier is still alive and is perhaps persuaded himself by new evidence to revise his ideas, that might not happen.

Analytical chemistry gets a boost vis-a-vis the more...artistic British approach that otherwise dominated the field in the 1810s. I wonder what Lavoisier would have thought to Italian and Swedish electrochemistry?
 

Thande

Donor
Although as AE says, Lavoisier's views of Scheele's work would be interesting (he did most of it in Lavoisier's lifetime, but it wasn't published outside Sweden until much later).
 
Heresy :eek:

(again it is almost nothing you cannot learn at AH.com) :D
We're all Scandinavians in this together, eh?

Altough, it would be more understandable if Thande thought Ørsted was Norwegian, the Norwegians being a part of the Danish Realm and having the Ø.
 

Thande

Donor
I blame my mistaking Scandinavians for the fact that all the books I've ever read don't give Oersted's no-smoking-sign O, presumably because the English printers didn't have one. ;)
 
I'm such a fan of him, the guillotine killed many valuable people.
It is a dark part of french history.

I'm glad we don't give the death penalty anymore...
 
Top